


My blade is sharp

by sternflammenden



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-20
Updated: 2012-04-20
Packaged: 2017-11-03 23:31:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/387187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sternflammenden/pseuds/sternflammenden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Barbrey is weary of the northern situation. </p><p>Written for LiveJournal's dark_fest.  Prompt was <i>Barbrey Dustin/Roose Bolton, The North Remembers/Barbrey gets revenge</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My blade is sharp

**I. The Dreadfort**  
The first time that they lie together, her sister is ill. Barbrey visits the Dreadfort, heart full of rage for Bethany’s ruin, but rage soon turns to pity when she sees her blank stare, her limp hands, her slack expression. Gone is the woman who made servants quail when they’d erred, the woman who’d wasted away her youth giving birth to dead or dying children, the woman who’d sold her sharp pragmatism and wit to become nothing but Roose Bolton’s wife. 

She doesn’t even recognize Barbrey when she visits her. She sits in a chair, by a window, looking at nothing, or everything, at the snow that covers the grounds outside of the holdfast, at chunks of ice that fight against the currents in the Wailing Water, at the crows that gather outside of her window and pick and squabble over abandoned carrion. But Barbrey doesn’t think that she really sees any of it. Her mind is with Domeric, wherever he’s gone, and perhaps this is a mercy.

“Beth,” she says gently, her hand on her sister’s shoulder. Barbrey, frustrated, takes her hand, which is cold as ice, cold as the corpse that she might as well be. It’s limp and when she squeezes it, there is no response. 

She leaves the room, unable to bear it. 

*

“It is not worth the trouble,” Roose Bolton says. Barbrey’s old hatred towards him is now tempered, the fiery disgust that she’d initially felt when he entered her life now barely smoldering. “She has no idea that you’re there.” 

“How can you abandon her?” Barbrey protests. Her words fall on deaf ears, frighteningly loud in the stillness. “She is your _wife_.”

“She _was_ my wife.” His eyes are hard, his face a mask. “There is nothing left.”

Barbrey hates to admit it, but he is right. And she despises him for it. 

Later, they dine together but do not speak, seated at opposite ends of a lengthy table that she is sure has never been put to the use for which it was intended. For who would feast at the Dreadfort, who would make merry under the pall that hangs heavy over its Great Hall, or in the tomblike silence that pervades its dimly lit hallways? Since Beth fell ill, her husband has had most of the castle shut up, for there are no children, no retainers, no one but Roose Bolton and sometimes, his bastard son. And now, Barbrey. She tries not to shudder as she watches her brother-in-law slice rare venison that he will barely touch, the blood running out, red gouts staining the trencher. She thinks of the tales that have grown round her Bolton cousins, and although she dismisses most of them as idle nonsense, she has always wondered. 

And Beth had never been one to tell tales. 

*

That night, she is restless, and sits in the parlor, watching Roose Bolton write letter after letter before a dying fire. Barbrey is almost captivated by how mechanical and precise he is, never wasting a gesture, never permitting anything to mar his blank expression. It is not until her body betrays her with a yawn that he realizes that she is still there, and putting aside his pen, his parchments, the pink sealing wax, he extends an arm to her and leads her to the rooms which have been prepared. 

_Such pointless courtesies_ , Barbrey thinks. It is not that the feel of his arm on hers is distasteful. It is merely that there is no kindness behind the gesture, no intent, nothing but a learned sense of what is proper, and what is done. An actor playing a role. _No_ , she thinks then, suppressing a wry smile, _a statue tarted up to look as a man, mindless, heartless_. 

He surprises her by breaking the silence. 

“They are not much, but they will do.” 

Barbrey frowns. “Such a welcome.” 

Roose only stares at her. “It has been difficult, without someone running the house. Bethany was always so efficient. Brutally efficient.” 

It is the most that she has ever heard him say about her sister, and she is slightly shocked at the note of praise in his voice. 

“I do not know now how I managed without her.” He sits in the armchair, the only seat in the room, and it is then that Barbrey notices how exhausted that her brother-in-law looks. 

“An orderly household is a comfort,” she finally says, after a long awkward silence. He stares at her, and Barbrey feels her face burn, knowing that she is saying the wrong sorts of things, but how does one offer comfort to someone who is without feelings? “You never know until someone is gone-” But that is also the wrong thing, as Bethany still breathes, and her voice fails her, breaking off, dying away. 

She hadn’t known what to say when Domeric died either, and had stayed away, mourning the child she’d loved, wondering about the man that he’d become, from her seat in the Barrowlands. She wore black for Willam out of custom, but she wore black for Domeric out of genuine tribute. Now she feels that she ought to say something, anything, if only for the boy’s sake. And for Beth’s sake. 

“Roose,” she says, in an uncharacteristically gentle tone. He stares at her as if she’s gone mad. “I _am_ sorry. Please believe that I am.” 

“Lady Barbrey.” He stands, as if to leave. 

“I have offended you.” She takes hold of him, regretting the gesture, but not knowing what else to do. 

“She won’t recover,” he says, his voice strange, and Barbrey cannot understand why until she realizes that it is tinged with regret, however small. He gently removes her hand from his shoulder, but there is a force behind it that speaks of his brutality. 

Barbrey does not let go of his hand. “Are you quite sure?” she says softly. 

He nods. “The Maester said that her mind is gone.” 

Barbrey bites her lip, knowing that he has the right of it. She has seen that life, which had flared so briefly and so brightly, has gone out. “And then?” 

“Then nothing,” he replies, his voice again dead and cold, his face the same. 

They stand in front of the bed, narrow, bedecked with faded hangings, years out of fashion, if they ever were. 

“Nothing,” she repeats, her voice just as hard. 

She doesn’t protest when he pulls her to the bed, nor does she stop him when he forces himself upon her. She closes her eyes, trying to enjoy it for what it is, for it has been so long since hands have touched her, pleasured her. But it is mechanical and brutal, and although she comes after a fashion, biting her lip until her mouth fills with the taste of copper, there is no pleasure in it. 

When he leaves her, she lies awake, digging nails into her palms. 

_At least I can still feel_ , Barbrey thinks. 

 

 **II. Barrowton**  
She sighs when she hears children’s voices echoing in the empty halls of her home. It’s only the cook’s boys, helping with the kitchen’s preparation for the coming winter, but sometimes, if Barbrey closes her eyes, she can imagine that the years have turned, and her nephew is there, just out of sight. She smiles at his memory, of course, but it is an expression that is tinged with regret, and sprinkled liberally with bitterness. The gods had not seen fit to grant children to her and Willam, and when her nephew came to live with them for a time, it was as if they had a son, after all. His little voice filled so well the awkward silences that so often fell between them, and his surprisingly gentle nature went amazingly far to smooth the tensions that lay, unbidden, just under the surface of their marriage. 

Domeric had been a sweet child and there was so little of his parents in him. Aside from his father’s queer pale eyes, almost out of place in his sweet face, he was all smiles and light, although he was also shy and tentative at first, a by-product of his upbringing. Roose and Bethany had clutched their son to them, binding him close, the precious heir. Considering that his predecessors had failed in the womb or grown cold in their cribs, it was not unjustified. But neither of them were capable of much affection, and when he was hers for that brief time, she had showered him with the love that she’d buried under years of disappointment. 

And when he was a man grown, a fine young lord, almost a knight, he’d died too, under frighteningly suspicious circumstances, and his parents had hidden their faces and looked the other way and mourned their heir. 

A waste, all of it. 

And she has her suspicions, long-nursed in a bosom turned to ice.

*

_Bethany held the child tightly, the only one that had survived, pressing him to her bosom, and Barbrey feared that the poor thing would be smothered by his mother’s frantic affections. She watched as he fed, as he drowsed, head lolling on his mother’s shoulder, and listened as her sister sang softly a wordless lullaby born of the moment, her face soft, her hands gentle. When she laid him in the cradle, they both leaned over the edge, smiling figures looming over the child who laughed at the sight, before closing his eyes, those eerie, colorless things that did not sit right in the rounded face of an infant, and falling asleep._

_Bethany turned to her then, and their eyes met. Her voice was low and menacing. “He is our last hope,” she said, her face hard as her husband’s. It was chilling at times, how like they’d grown, how much she’d absorbed in her isolated life with naught but Bolton and his men for companions, and now, this child. “And one day, he will raise Bolton again, as it once was.”_

_Barbrey was doubtful, incredulous almost. To rest such expectations on something so small and fragile was delusional, mad even. But she kept her silence as Bethany continued._

_“He will be pure,” she said, her eyes downcast, looking upon her son, her Domeric, with a reverent expression. “He will be good, and not like-” But she did not finish her thought. She merely shook her head. “Unlike mine, his hands will be clean.”_

*

But she could not brood upon the past for long, for her brother-in-law was here and as such, required her to play the gracious hostess. Barbrey was weary of pleasantries. Weary of nodding and smiling and paying court to Roose’s increasingly desperate bids at Northern supremacy. She’d frowned when she’d heard of Harrenhall and had laughed, cruelly, when he’d written to her of his marriage to a fifteen year old Frey granddaughter. And now, this half-witted plot to wed his bastard, now elevated to legitimacy, to another child, Arya Stark. As if that would really bring them Winterfell, and all it stood for. 

She smiled though, when he clasped her hand, handing him the cup of wine that he did not drink, suspecting even her, a benign widow. She agreed when he spoke of the wedding, congratulated him when he told her how quickly he’d gotten his young wife with child, and showed him to his rooms as the courteous hostess would. They’d been Willam’s. Nothing was too fine for the Lord Paramount in the North, after all. 

And now, when his hands tear the fabric of her bodice, and he pins her to the wall, she allows it, closing her eyes so that she cannot see his blank expression as he takes her, her labored breath the only betrayal that the act is anything of significance. 

When he leaves her, Barbrey sits before her mirror, examining the purple bruises that have bloomed on her shoulders, a parting gift from her Lord of Bolton. Her face softens as she traces them with an idle finger. The pain, lingering, reminds her that she is still alive, and that pleases her. 

 

 **III. The Dreadfort, before the wedding**  
When they plan the joyous union, Barbrey rolls her eyes at the presumption and the arrogance. The plot is flimsy, built on nothing save a slim hope that a north grown restless and desperate will be placated by Ned Stark’s daughter. As for the girl, she weeps, eyes like blood, face scarlet, and although Barbrey finds such displays tiresome, she wonders what insult that Roose’s bastard has visited upon her and warns them against displaying such things before their allies, who still remember Ned and are unsatisfied with this poor substitute. 

“Another child,” she says coldly to Roose, before the ceremony, “sold in marriage to a cruel husband.” She intends it to be a double-edged insult, but he ignores it. Of course he does; his wife is beautifully ignorant of what lies behind her new husband’s courteous façade, kept coddled and placated by pointless extravagance, her existence wrapped in playing at Lady Bolton and in keeping the child that grows in her belly. Roose’s heir. Barbrey pities Walda for that, pities the babe, knowing that it is more likely that history will repeat itself and her suspicions will be vindicated, at the cost of two innocent lives. 

It’s like Domeric and Bethany, come again. 

She wonders if she should allow it, if it is worth the risk to check it before it can fester, before it can burst into a sickly bloom, and she will see two girls dead, instead of just one. 

Barbrey thinks about Ramsay, his brutal ways, the tales that she hears from the Dustin and Ryswell men. Donella Hornwood, locked in her tower, bloody knucklebones gnawed to nothingness. That Reek creature that Roose has dragged into the mess, the ruined prince, his stench, his mewling and cringing. 

She wonders who will be next. She wonders at times, if it won’t be her. 

So she takes a blade, slender and subtle, and slides it into her sleeve. She breathes easier knowing that it’s there, the cool feel of the steel on her bare arm soothing as nothing else. 

 

 **IV. Winterfell, after the wedding**  
She hears Arya’s screams, and suppresses a smile. It’s only a matter of time before they rise against the bastard. They’d barely tolerated his father, and to think of Ned Stark’s daughter so ill-treated, she knows that any Northman worth his salt won’t stand for this for long. 

Manderly had bade her to comfort the girl, this Arya, if that is her real name. Barbrey doubts it more and more each day, thinking on Brandon and the fire in his eyes, and seeing none of it in the pale, shrinking creature who lurks in half-shadows, clutching herself, trembling like a leaf when her new lord husband comes near. And as she watches, she feels hate in her heart, something that she hasn’t permitted for years. While she’s been entrenched at Barrowton, swathed in widow’s weeds, the world has gone mad. 

Manderly tells her to wait. She doesn’t think much of him when she’s honest with herself, finding him overly-circumspect, too cautious, and she wearies of his game, playing the fat old fool for the benefit of upstarts and brutes. As there is no other option, Barbrey quiets herself, but as time wears on and blood spills across the Great Hall, and the storm outside, one of stags and squids, beats against the door, she can no longer remain acquiescent. 

She thinks about Bethany and the baby, who grew into the lost little boy. She thinks of Brandon, strangled, his father roasted alive. Willam’s bones, lost gods-know-where, bleached by an alien sun, likely dust. Even Walda, Roose’s daughter-bride, heavily pregnant, clutching his arm with her desperate affection, and the terrible fear in her eyes when his son passes by her. All of them. 

Sometimes she longs to bloody her hands, to see them run red as she imagines that Bethany’s did in chambers beneath the ground. 

She can now understand the inclination. 

*

He comes to her for the last time the night before the battle. Walda has made herself sick with grief, taken to bed with as much dreamwine as the babe could stand, even in sleep clutching one of her husband’s shirts, a totem, a fetish. She wonders how a child like that could care so, and realizes that it is easy when such cold caresses are the only affection that she has ever known. But Barbrey tries not to think of the Frey girl when Roose takes her. It is far too depressing a thought.

This time, she fights back with teeth and nails. This time, she doesn’t want to scour her tainted flesh, to burn away what has profaned her. She smiles when he gasps from the pain of her teeth on his throat, and after, as they lie exhausted, aching, she pulls the dagger from under her mattress, cherishing the comforting feel of the worn leather handle, feeling the whisper of cool air from the steel as she slides it under the mattress, grazing her thigh with the blade. 

Her brother-in-law lies beside her, his eyes closed, half-clad, breath quieting. And for a moment, she has reservations. She thinks on Domeric’s love for his queerly cold father, Bethany’s odd devotion, and the child Walda, who will weep for her lost love, for her half-orphaned child. But the call of the knife is too strong, and she thinks on how many have died at his hands, and hands like his, those she knows, those she has loved, and those who circumstance and courtesy have masked from her. And she holds the knife close, her breath still, her hand steady. All of their faces are before her as she raises it. 

It is so easy. Barbrey smiles as she drives the blade into his stomach, up to the hilt. And when Roose stares at her blankly, mouth open slightly, a ribbon of blood trickling from the corner, a perfect match for the red that spreads slowly across the coverlet, she laughs. 

Their eyes meet, and she thinks what a pity it is that he should have such an ignoble death. Stabbed in the belly by his whore, and not even a pretty young thing but a dried-up old woman, grasping and cold and miserable and plain. 

They will laugh, she hopes, just as she laughs now, a riotous stream of wordless mirth, comingled with the tears that stream down her cheeks. 

Roose smiles then, and raises a shaking hand, reddened with his own life, to stroke her cheek, smudging it with blood. 

“I would never have figured you for a turncloak, Lady Barbrey. So you _were_ for Manderly then,” he whispers, slumping back against the pillows, a small smile twisting his lips. It looks hideous, unnatural. 

When he dies, it is no great matter. Just a cessation of breath, a limpness of the body, and all is done. 

Barbrey lies there, scarlet and shaking, but her voice is clear when next she speaks. 

“No,” she says softly, closing his eyes, pulling the blankets up to cover what ruin she has made of him. “I was only for myself.” 

She sits there watching, waiting, until morning comes, a curious smile on her face.


End file.
